111–120 of 147 posts
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Guided meditation is a big deal. I know a number of people who use Headspace. Also, obviously, some people are better at meditating. I think most meditation practitioners tend to sort of remove ego, not add to it. So I don't see anyone being competitive about it. But I do see people desperate for the benefits and looking to those good at it to show them the way. There are worse things people could be trying really ha…
> obviously, some people are better at meditating This is not obvious to me. This is the message the meditation industry is trying to sell, and I'm not buying it. We have a long history in the West of selling pre-packaged individually-wrapped enlightenment products and claiming they come from the East, where enlightenment was invented. But that's marketing, not reality.
Why do you find this hard to believe? Meditation and mindfulness is a skill, there are in fact various techniques or approaches one can take to improve the effectiveness. Being opposed to charging money for this is one thing, denying its existence is something else.
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Good for you. Just because a person can do something fine by themselves doesn't mean that a service can't help other people. Some people can work out fine by themselves. Personal trainers help others. The existence of personal trainers doesn't stop anyone from working out themselves, and they do provide a benefit to some people. Why does a, say, app have to be telling you're doing it sub-optimally?? Why can't it be s…
> Why can't it be something that provides things like convenience or assistance Because the experience and practice of meditation is so entirely subjective as to make these claims absurd. What does convenience mean to meditation, when all that meditation requires is for you to be present?
https://www.amazon.com/Mind-Illuminated-Complete-Meditation-...
I have practiced meditation for 20 years but I still don't understand what is the purpose of emptiness (I mean I used to think I did but now I'm not so sure). What would be the purpose from a reinforcement learning point of view? A state where I have no likes or dislikes, no goal, no reward signals, where I feel no attraction or repulsion, where the distinction between self and other disappears. An uprooted agent dri…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Good for you. Just because a person can do something fine by themselves doesn't mean that a service can't help other people. Some people can work out fine by themselves. Personal trainers help others. The existence of personal trainers doesn't stop anyone from working out themselves, and they do provide a benefit to some people. Why does a, say, app have to be telling you're doing it sub-optimally?? Why can't it be s…
> Why can't it be something that provides things like convenience or assistance Because the experience and practice of meditation is so entirely subjective as to make these claims absurd. What does convenience mean to meditation, when all that meditation requires is for you to be present?
Not really surprised. How do you even do measurements in a brain to see if it has any effect? It's already quite tricky to make sure anti depressants work, so I would not trust meditation. At best you just make people believe doing it will make them better, so as long as they believe it, it might be reassuring enough. I don't tell people to do meditation, I tell them to go to a quiet place outside, in a park or woods…
> to sit and do nothing and let their thoughts go around. Pretty dangerous if those thoughts are "I am worthless and no-one would miss me if I die" or "my family would be better off if I kill myself".
There is no need for scientific proof. I observe that being mindful changes things for me: The way I listen to people, the way I eat, the way I handle rejection or anger or any other feeling. I realize that being mindful (vs mindlessly and blindly doing things) sharpens my senses, makes me think clearer, makes me change perspectives, create more categories or realize that I think within categories. I got in touch wit…
If you need a book to meditate, you are probably doing it wrong.
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The important bridge is to realize that the feeling (paranoia) is something you can choose to embrace or not. Once the feeling is no longer something that automatically 'happens to you', one can start to explore it - at a safe distance, no rush. Why am I feeling in this way? Is there a good reason? If yes, what could I do about it? What would happen if I would just dismiss the feeling without doing anything? What wou…
What you're describing can be helpful, but I'm describing a state where you fundamentally go beyond any involvement of thoughts including a countering internal dialogue. By many accounts, the key indicator of being in this state is one of peace/bliss/serenity/total contentment. In fact, I should really say you operate from a place which is 'before thought', since 'beyond' suggests something after the thinking process…
As somebody with clinical anxiety, I have been prescribed CBT and Mindfulness on the NHS, I think this piece misses several key points. For one thing, NICE (the UK NGO responsible for analysing evidence and making recommendations on the efficacy of treatments and their cost effectiveness) and an all-party Parliamentary group found signifcant evidence to recommend Mindfulness as a treatment for anxiety and mild depres…
I have practiced meditation for 20 years but I still don't understand what is the purpose of emptiness (I mean I used to think I did but now I'm not so sure). What would be the purpose from a reinforcement learning point of view? A state where I have no likes or dislikes, no goal, no reward signals, where I feel no attraction or repulsion, where the distinction between self and other disappears. An uprooted agent dri…
>"Meditation is the discovery that the point of life is always arrived at in the immediate moment. And, therefore, if you meditate for an ulterior motive – that is to say, to improve your mind, to improve your character, to be more efficient in life – you’ve got your eye on the future and you are not meditating. Because, the future is a concept; it doesn’t exist. As the proverb says, “Tomorrow never comes.” There is…
The spiritual utility, as it is presented in tradition, is related to attaining some sort of freedom and realization, a subjective feeling. But I am thinking (devil's advocate) that all are just patterns of activation in the brain, in other words, just perceptions and emotions. And from a practical point of view, there is nothing useful about it - I am referring only to emptiness, not to mindful attention.